20 years ago, I wrote in a “Statement of Faith” as a part of some ordination requirements, that “God baptizes no economic system”. IN the United States, capitalism is set against socialism and communism, and the educational and professinal system extols the virtues of the free market, some more than others. Some even absolutize this superiority such that the absolute righteousness of “free market” rises to the level of religious dogma, even amongst those whose dogmas include the literal interpretion of all Scripture, which itself is rife with stories and appropriate warnigs from prophets about the idolatry in trusting in ANYTHING but God. This seems to be lost on the Religious Right. It is one of those canonical adjustments that produces what Jim Wallis calls a Bible “full of holes”. Instead of a “Wholistic” hermenetic, we have a “hole-istic” approach, cutting out chuunks of such massive quantities that we are left with little of the challenges to the world’s systems.

Hauerwas constantly emphasizes how it is the call of the Church to, first and foremost, to BE the Church. To simply LIVE IT. He points out how Jesus is not recorded to be an outspoken critic of empire (even though, as he would agree, his very life embodied a challenge of such proportions that he was nonetheless approached as a danger by the powerful).

I was reading Harbinger’s reflections on “Hauewas vs Cone” the other day:

Cone’s refusal to countenance a version of Christianity that is concerned more with its own integrity than the amelioration of dehumanizing poverty reveals the weakness of Hauerwas’ conception of political alternativity.

I don’t read Hauerwas as suggesting that the Church is “more concerned” with one over the other, only that the BEING the Church, as Hauerwas places at the center, IS in fact the means in which the Church positions itself as an opponent to the world’s systems, including those which so many Churches have uncritically and thus, idolatrously accepted as a major , theologically santified motif within their theology. As Hauerwas and Bonhoeffer both attest, BEING the Church, by virtue of the fact that it will abhor violence rather than glorify it and canonize it, will by nature position itself as an enemy of the state.

The final word for the Christian and the Church. therefore, should not be based on whether a society looks or sounds like capitalism rather than communism or socialism, but whether or not any of them really have a claim to success in the historical instances of their practices, and how EACH of them is susceptible to idolatrous exaltation of their grand experiments over and above a Biblical vision of a just society.

Then Harbinger also says:

But that is not to say that the rightful need to retain a distinctive Christian identity eclipses an obligation to pursue justice through political means.

Harbinger obviously holds this dialectic; this tension; this polarity in constant tension.